Task Completion and Consumer Confidence
In many of our previous pieces, we touched on the power of task completion as both a predictive metric and the ultimate source of business intelligence in today’s challenging web environment. But is there also a case for task completion as a high-level indicator of overall economic health?
In the wake of last fall’s economic panic, it was inevitable that we would watch task completion dip very sharply. As the economic downturn worsened and unemployment rates rose, consumers became and remained generally pessimistic about overall business conditions. Recently, however, there has been a sharp uptick in task completion, indicating that consumer behavior is getting back to a more salutary state.
Online purchases and transactions are strong indicative signs of renewed optimism on the part of consumers. As overall pessimism about the short term outlook begins to slowly diminish, consumers begin to gain more confidence about the economic recovery, which is then reflected in their purchasing behavior. It's a virtuous feedback loop, where higher visit success reinforces confidence, which then in turn helps to overcome barriers to online purchasing.
The increase in task completion that we've observed over the past two quarters is now being duplicated in the form of a rebound in consumer confidence. Metadata from our 4Q online survey tool reveals task completion and overall satisfaction for the retail and e-commerce sectors have increased proportionally with consumer confidence. Since February 2009, task completion and overall satisfaction results from website running the 4Q online survey have risen from 71% to 78% and from 71 to 74, respectively. At the same time, data from The Conference Board shows a surge in the consumer confidence index since the late spring.
That strong relationship between these two metrics is no mere coincidence. Task completion and consumer confidence are intimately connected. It is only one reason why you should constantly be keeping an eye on your task completion score, especially if you are retailing online.
